Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0606383

From: Robert Fesen [view email]

Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 19:38:51 GMT (730kb)

A High-Altitude, Station-Keeping Astronomical Platform

Authors: Robert A. Fesen (Department of Physics & Astronomy, Dartmouth College)

Comments: 11 pages, 10 figures. To appear in Proc. SPIE 6267, "Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes", 2006 May 24-31, Orlando, Florida USA (6267-15)

Several commercial telecommunication ventures together with a well funded US military program make it a likely possibility that an autonomous, high-altitude, light-than-air (LTA) vehicle which could maneuver and station-keep for weeks to many months will be a reality in a few years. Here I outline how this technology could be used to develop a high-altitude astronomical observing platform which could return high-resolution optical data rivaling those from space-based platforms but at a fraction of the cost.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606383